Tuesday, March 15, 2011

A friend with a new baby told me 'you can’t get the trifecta': Feeding, Sleeping and Toilet Training. At least one has to go pear-shaped probably two. Like when you’re single and having a great job, great apartment and great boyfriend at the same time is inexplicably impossible.

Well my darling girl was a terrible sleeper and breast feeding WAS rocket science for both of us; followed by the 'solids struggle' so my expectations on toilet training have been raised somewhat.

This project has been delayed thus far due to back to back house-guests most of last year; followed by selling our house; followed by our uber-movers throwing us into total chaos for our first month in the new house: (tools in the attic and silk dresses in the shed kind of stuff). I still haven’t found the gift I had for my afore-mentioned friend's baby shower, or importantly this week; the toddler toilet seat. I will mention at this point that all of the boxes have been unpacked, so go figure..

But my little girl has taken to this stuff like a duck to water after a bit of a rough start. I never wanted to use a potty, enrolled at the 'begin as you mean to go on' school of thought. But when push came to shove she was getting pretty pissed-off being dragged away from her art/ puzzles/ gardening/ dancing/ TV to sit on the damned toilet every 30 minutes. So we opted for the Toilet seat every hour or so and the potty in between. It's become a comfy little throne for her where she's happy to sit and watch cartoons or read, or chat with her Dinosaurs, or just watch her own front bottom to see if anything's coming out yet.

When she does something substantial, she bends over it to inspect the outcome and every time makes the same announcement: “Yuck”.

My problem with this extra curricular activity is that I'm still finding and fixing stuff post move and organising and reclaiming spaces and doing washing and cooking and clearing up and meanwhile she's getting very independent.

So at the weekend I'm in the Laundry fixing shelves to the wall and I hear a scraping noise in the next room, I vaguely wonder if her father is still watching her, or his blackberry, and which dining chair she's chosen to take for a walk. Then I hear a splash in the toilet and I turn. Well slay me, the little villain has done her business and decided, in the absence of adult supervision to transport her load to the toilet bowl. She pushed the potty across the lounge, up the step past the kitchen and didn’t spill a drop, so how proud do I feel?

Now my world revolves around her bottom: washing out potty, and teeny tiny undies after accidents (of which there are thankfully very few), and replacing contraptions on the toilet after adult use that assist little people up to the big toilet.

The downstairs loo is sporting what looks like a Lego crane, the upstairs loo has a large duck for a seat. She shouts, her new favourite word; "knickers!!" with the same explosive enthusiasm her father deploys for Arsenal's goals.

But apart from the odd setback, usually followed by a trailing bath towel held firmly between her legs for the preceding hour, this new idea of self toileting seems to have awakened an independent streak a mile long.

So I “left” her on the potty again (she actually wouldn’t come off) while I went to dig through the laundry which has been buried in tools and other flotsam since we moved 3 months ago.

I got side tracked when I found a leg from our sofa on top of the washer, remembering that the uber-movers had either knocked or pulled off most of the legs and there was actually only one attached to the thing.

Somehow after upending the sofa and screwing all the legs on, side-tracked again, I end up in the upstairs bathroom digging my Philips-head at something else, when along walks a little half naked girl carrying a warm potty to the toilet bowl to empty it.

I note how carefully she’s clutching it to her chest so she won’t spill it - and then there’s that random step down to the bathroom that none of us have quite gotten the hang of yet...

Many thanks to Knappy Knickers for this beautiful photo of Ollie and his little friend. For more details go to www.knappyknickers.com.au